It assigns a word to each letter so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself.
Some well known examples include:
- Bravo Zulu for "well done"
- Checkpoint Charlie (Checkpoint C) in Berlin
- Zulu Time for Greenwich Mean Time or Coordinated Universal Time.
- During the Vietnam War, the U.S. government referred to the Viet Cong as VC, or Victor Charlie; the name "Charlie" became synonymous with this force.